Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

The Romanian Mamapadurei lives in the woods in a hut with hen’s legs. The hut is surrounded by a palisade fence with human skulls stuck on the posts. She steals little children and turns them into trees. Baba Cloanta (Jaws) is a tall, ugly old hag with teeth like rakes. She guards a barrel of human souls. Baba Coaja is a child-killer with a long glass nose, one leg made of iron, and nails of brass. Baba Harca lives in the oven and steals stars out of the sky. The Romanian equivalent of Serbian St. Petka (Friday) or St. Paraskeva is Sfinta Vineri, who oversees women’s weaving work. She looks human, but her hen’s foot gives her away.

Vasorru baba is an old woman with an iron nose almost reaching her knees, who lives in Hungarian folktales. Vasorru baba tests young heroes and heroines, and if they aren’t kind to her, she turns them into animals or stones.

The Ragana is a mythical Lithuanian evil-doer (regeti is Lithuanian for to know, to see, to predict; ragas means horn or crescent moon). The Ragana has a mortar that she sleeps in or flies in, propelling herself with a broom and pestle. In winter, the Raganas swim in the open air, amid the ice, and sit high in the birch-trees combing their long hair. Their evil nature is more obvious in summer, when they destroy the crops, curdle the milk, kill newborn babes and make trouble at weddings, where they have been known to turn the groom into a wolf. The Ragana is connected with death and resurrection, or rather regeneration.

The Polish Jendžibaba, or Jedsi baba, is a woman who trots along on hen’s feet (pani na kurzej stopce), and she shares all the general characteristics of the Russian Baba Yaga.

The Lusatian Sorbs[55] believe in the wurlawy (or worawy), women of the forest who emerge from the trees at precisely ten o’clock in the evening. They set about ploughing the fields, and as they plough, they make a great hubbub. Wjera or Wjerobaba is the Lusatian Sorb version of Baba Yaga.

An old woman with an iron nose (Zhaliznonosa baba) ambles through Ukrainian fairytales, legends and creeds. She is followed by thirty babas with iron tongues and an iron baba (Zhalizna baba) whose house stands on duck’s feet.

The Norwegian variant of Baba Yaga could have been assembled from three women who appear in Norwegian fairytales. One is an old woman, the ‘old mother’ (gamlemor), whose long nose gets wedged into a tree stump and stays wedged there for a hundred years or so. The hero Espen Askeladd (a Norwegian version of the Russian Ivan the Fool or Ivan Popjalov) helps the old woman to free her nose, and in return he is given a magic flute. The second is the trollkjerring or haugkjerring, an old witch, while the third is the kjerringa mot strommen (roughly, ‘the woman who goes against the stream’), a stubborn woman, a contrary character, even a shrew.

Finno-Karelian folklore has the Syoyatar. Sparrows fly out of her eyes, crows fly out of her toes, vipers slither from under her fingernails, ravens flap out of her mouth and magpies out of her hair. The Syoyatar embodies evil and never helps anybody, but it is a comfort to know that she is no cannibal. Akka, another Finno-Karelian evil-doer, is much closer to Baba Yaga. She lives in the woods or near the seashore, she threatens to eat passing travellers, she has breasts the size of buckets and she can wrap her legs three times around the hut. Like Baba Yaga, Akka wants the hero or heroine to accomplish different tasks (heating the bath, feeding the animals, caring for the horses), and she rewards good service with useful advice.

Baba Yaga has numerous relatives in Western Europe. Let’s just mention that in France – the land of foie gras – there are legendary females with goose feet. Arie, or Aunt Arie (Tante Arie, Tantarie) has iron teeth and goose feet. Tantarie punishes lazy weavers and rewards hard-working ones. During the Christmas holiday, she appears on a donkey and hands out presents. Tantarie lives in the cave where she guards her chest with its jewels, and she only takes off her golden crown, studded with diamonds, when she bathes. In Germany, Perchta is an old woman with big goose feet, who carries her broom around with her, as well as a needle and scissors. She cuts open the stomachs of lazy girls and sloppy housewives with her scissors and fills them up with rubbish. The famous Frau Holle – a tall, grey-haired woman with long teeth, who frightens little children and tests the kindness and patience of young maidens – has features in common with Baba Yaga.

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